About Jason Thibeault

Hi! I'm a tech guy, skeptic, feminist, gamer and atheist, and love OSS and science of all stripes. I enjoy a good bit of whargarbl now and again, and will occasionally even seek it out. I am also apparently responsible for the death of common sense on the internet. My bad.

I have opinions. So do you. You want to share them with me. I would like to do likewise. Please don't expect a platform for proselytizing that will go unchecked and unchallenged, though. Contact me via the clicky thingies under my banner.

The commenting rules are simple: don't piss me off. This rule has worked for me for a decade; I have never found a need for any other rule, because any other rules leads to rules-lawyering. Just remember -- this is my property, not yours.

How does one prove astrology? BY STARTING OVER. (a repost)

Another repost. Sorry, still crazy-go-nuts at work. Work will continue to be busy for quite some time, it seems. Check the original for comments from Curtis.

The undying zombie astrology thread has attracted another latecomer to the party, this time Curtis Manwaring of Astrology X-Files, an astrology software developer who put together a seemingly testable hypothesis and added it as a comment on that thread. I’m moving my response to its own post, because frankly, nobody seems to be reading any of the follow-ups that have linked to it, and would rather continue the fight there. I’m tired of the single zombie thread, which is responsible for the vast majority of my database difficulties, causing me to hack my website to absurd degrees as a result. If it keeps attracting newcomers, I’ll close it, and add a comment saying “this post is closed, please visit any of the posts linked on page 9 of the comments if you want to continue the discussion.”
The meat of Curtis’ comment appears to be a way to test astrology, or at least one aspect of it. My problem with the suggestion is the same that I’ve had with the concept of astrology as a whole — it depends on a foundation that is simply not there. It builds on hypotheses that have simply never been proven, but rather always taken for granted. For instance, the hypothesis that there is any sort of correlation between the planets’ movements and people’s individual lives. Beyond this, much of what he suggests appears to disagree with other astrologers in the thread — even if you exclude Jamie “Darkstar” Funk of Dark Star Astrology (who has since attempted to shed his association with his ridiculous arguments here by changing his name). And to make matters worse, it appears to misunderstand statistical significance, the importance of sample sizes, and the importance of controlling for variables.

This is, as all my discussions against unfalsifiable and self-perpetuating memes, a long one. Grab a coffee.

I could suggest a course of action if there is anyone so inclined (I’m too busy with software development to take this one on now). One of many problems is that much of what is said as effects is not easily nailed down in a way that can be falsified, so a scientific proof will have to address this issue. For this area, the realm of the concrete particular is more desirable than spiritual / psychological astrology to avoid subjectivity as much as possible.

I like the idea of actually attempting to avoid subjectivity in studying astrology, but I’ve noticed that rarely will you find two astrologers who agree on what particular configurations of events actually mean. None of the present day body of “knowledge” of astrology is based on any such falsification, so to be totally intellectually honest, if we were to attempt to prove any aspect of it in concrete particulars, one would literally have to start over — to scratch everything that’s purported to be true about astrology and start from scientific first principles. The problem then, when doing so, is that one will literally find that every aspect of astrology that one believes presently, turns out to be either false or unfalsifiable. What is one then left with? Is it actually called astrology then?

As to causes, even if a correlation could be proved it still would not necessarily rise to the level of efficient causation, but more along the lines of material causes (see Aristotle’s 4 causes) at best. One issue that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere here (I confess I don’t have a lot of time and haven’t read everything here), is that not all charts were said to be equally telling (chrematistikos) according to Vettius Valens (he was an astrologer from the Hellenistic era who was roughly a contemporary of Ptolemy). What Valens said is that some nativities were more “fated” than others and these charts one can more easily “read” and that some charts fall into a category that are more difficult to discern because they are less “telling” (without getting into the technicalities of how that is determined here). I just highlight this issue because these charts are the best cases in which I can imagine any sort of proof because if it is true that some charts are more readable than others, then it is also the case that these are the cases that can prove whether there is anything going on or not.

The idea that any one chart is not as “telling” as another, is encompassed but not directly referenced by the idea that no two astrologers can agree on what a chart actually means. As it is not a science, and as most astrologers employ as much art as science even in creating the charts much less interpreting them, any attempt at producing a scientifically derived canonical body of astrological knowledge would injure pretty much every astrologer’s practice in some way. Having a scientifically derived body of knowledge, though, levels the playing field. It would no longer depend on who’s doing the astrological predictions, so much as flow from scientifically proven fact when certain aspects come into play in a person’s life.

If some charts are telling and some aren’t, that lends to selection bias. If you get a hit, that chart must have been telling. If you get a miss, either the chart wasn’t telling or you did it wrong — either way, selection bias will not allow for the possibility that astrology, as a field, was wrong.

Picking a chart and simply reading it is not the way to go about doing this because there are no boundaries set for truth or falsification that can be measured and the key is measurement. Science has had a long battle distinguishing the measurement and the measured from Heisenberg to Plato…

And there are other problems regarding falsification of particular charts. Namely, each set of aspects has not been individually studied to discover actual correlations between the aspects and some particular about the person’s life who is supposedly influenced by said aspects. Scientific controls are difficult to pin down with regard to astrology; I will certainly agree with you on that. But they are not impossible. They are more possible if you start from first principles.

There are also a number of assumptions that would have to be dismissed such as life being random or completely under one’s control. It is not logical to expect everyone to suddenly wake up at 3 am in Chicago and suddenly have a craving for studying calculus for example. By this I mean that certain patterns would be expected to begin with, so a baseline of what is “random chance” would have to be established to determine the norm.

Life is not completely random, nor is it completely under one’s control, but this is because we live in a deterministic universe. Cause always precedes effect, and if we knew all the variables, we could calculate out things like how a person’s life might play out. We’d need far more variables than what planets existed — we’d need everything, from every charge state and position of every molecule, and an understanding of how every molecule might affect every other. I suspect there is no such thing as free will — that we are chemicals and our present consciousnesses are products of our upbringings, and since we were in turn brought up by people whose consciousnesses are determined by their upbringings in a direct cause-and-effect sort of way, we’re pretty much doing exactly what we would do in a perfect full-universe simulation.

That is a digression. What I’m saying is, we can throw out “completely random”, and “complete free will”, but we shouldn’t throw out “deterministic” just because you’re studying variables that have negligible actual effect on the local population. Such as the position of Pluto when a person was born. Pluto doesn’t exert any influence on us. The only two celestial bodies that exert any influence on us are the sun and the moon, without which we probably wouldn’t be here to discuss this nonsense.

Again, in studying what baseline behaviour is, and determining what falls under the realm of “influence”, you would be best served by throwing out every bit of “knowledge” about astrology so far with the exception of the ephemerides — the movements of the planets and other heavenly bodies — because those are merely the easiest and most accurate way to predict where a planet might be at a given date. Teach a group of people how to build charts, then have those people create charts for a very large number of people from a very random selection set — let’s say ten thousand people selected in such a way as to prevent any sort of race, gender, location or affluence biases. Make the charts blinded — assign each person a number. Give these charts to your statisticians to attempt to find trends. At the same time, have these people interviewed by psychologists, and a good sense of the person’s actual psychology. Then have the psychologists and the statisticians compare notes. See if there is a statistical correlation between certain configurations and certain psychologies (and we’re not talking something that could be attributed to random noise — you’d need a large number of people with a specific psychology to suggest a specific event).

Once you have some possible hits, do not add them to your scientifically derived body of astrological knowledge yet. This is how astrology likely got its first start — by picking hits and saying “this must be how to interpret the signs”, then building on it from there. Once you have those possible hits, you need to attempt to replicate, using another identically configured test with another random but fair selection of equal size. Once you have replication of certain patterns, then and only then should you start looking for (again, a large sample of) people that fall under that pattern in order to see if there is a statistically significant relationship between people who have that pattern in their charts, and the specific effects you believe you’re looking for. If you can blind this, by having the tests carried out by different sets of statisticians, chart-makers and psychologists, that would be of course best.

Let me suggest that given that a chart with angular trigon lords and with the lot of spirit in the 10th sign from fortune, that when the zodiacal releasing reaches the 10th sign from fortune (if it does so in their lifetime) that they will reach their peak effectiveness and culmination of their actions (sometimes called fame). Obviously we would have to define “famous” in some way. I have done a few case studies such as what happens with actors (such as John Travolta who reached his peak and he was known for Pulp Fiction (1994), Saturday Night Fever and Grease(1977) when in his 10th from fortune period). George W. Bush reached his peak period starting in 1998 shortly before becoming president. Hitler reached his 10th from fortune period and the next day the Nazi’s won 108 seats in congress. Einstein was also in his 10th from fortune period when reaching peak fame. With more clearly defined rules, there is more hope for falsification which also allows for real verification.

Let ME suggest that your sample size is infinitesimally small. To achieve statistical significance, you’d have to have a very large, diverse and representative sample of people that match your selected criteria (e.g. who have angular trigon lords and a lot of spirit in the tenth sign, whatever that means), who are selected in such a way that other variables (e.g. country or region of birth, family cash-on-hand, etc.) are controlled for. Find me a few thousand people spread out amongst many family backgrounds and prove to me that there is no other variable that might account for the effect you’re claiming, and show me the data that shows that this particular chart orientation is statistically significantly correlated with the particular effect you’re claiming, and you might have something.

Rather than picking some people you know to be famous, then trying to find a correlation between them, pick a configuration and see if your totally random sample shows any trends that another control sample of completely random configurations does not. Repeat the test until you’re sure you’re not seeing noise in the data. Otherwise, you could be seeing a “mars effect” — a “statistically significant” result that actually isn’t significant at all.

I recuse myself of the responsibility of actually carrying out any of these suggestions, as I would be considered a hostile entity having argued strongly against astrology in the past. My protestations that my results are untarnished by bias, would naturally go unheeded, by virtue of my actual bias against things that people believe strongly, but show none of the intellectual curiosity or rigour necessary to make an honest assessment.

I am a software engineer and have a background in classical philosophy, statistics, mathematics, astronomy and the history of science.

I appreciate the note, but can’t help but think it is secondary to your argumentation. A question comes to mind — which did you study first? Astrology, or each / all of these fields of study? How much did you know about astrology, and believe about astrology, before you studied these fields?

You’re trying to set yourself up as an authority in several fields as though it means you have vetted the philosophical, statistical, mathematic and historical aspects of your field, being as it is the precursor to astronomy. Problem is, you’re still, in my estimation, starting from the principle that there is something to astrology, you just have to find an effect or a correlation or a mechanism. Normally one has one of the three before assuming they have anything at all. In a field that’s been investigated for as many thousands of years as astrology, one would think you’d have something by now.

I have no doubt in my mind that your astrology software (which costs a pretty penny by the way) is extremely effective at calculating out charts and events and such. They are very likely extremely well coded, polished pieces of software. And they’re probably very accurate in analyzing exactly where planets are, and exactly what charts would be drawn given the data at hand. My problem is not with the generation of the pseudo-random data, because it all has the patina of science, with complicated formulas and inscrutable charting formats. My problem is with the idea that all this pseudo-random data has been shown to have ANY correlation with reality whatsoever. As far as I can tell, it has not, and will not.

To this charge, every astrologer produces a small handful of hits, usually of famous events and celebrities. No astrologer has taken it upon themselves to increase their sample size beyond that small handful, and I can understand why — it’s a lot of work to do one chart, and when you get a hit, you’ve “gotten it right”, and it’s very exciting. I need more than people getting 25% hits throughout history before I’ll believe there’s any sort of correlation. I need way bigger samples, way better controls, and blinding, before any specific configuration-to-influence seems even remotely plausible. And once we have a configuration-to-influence correlation, I’ll need some plausible mechanism. That can come last, but it CANNOT be omitted in the pursuit of the truth about this universe.

You’re making the claim that it’s true. The burden of proof is on you. Otherwise, in view of the lack of evidence ever presented, I call hogwash on the whole self-perpetuating endeavour.

Like this:

Related

About the author

Hi! I'm a tech guy, skeptic, feminist, gamer and atheist, and love OSS and science of all stripes. I enjoy a good bit of whargarbl now and again, and will occasionally even seek it out. I am also apparently responsible for the death of common sense on the internet. My bad.

I have opinions. So do you. You want to share them with me. I would like to do likewise. Please don't expect a platform for proselytizing that will go unchecked and unchallenged, though. Contact me via the clicky thingies under my banner.

The commenting rules are simple: don't piss me off. This rule has worked for me for a decade; I have never found a need for any other rule, because any other rules leads to rules-lawyering. Just remember -- this is my property, not yours.

You’re mistaking that there is a difference between meaningful and significant in a statistical context. They are the same thing. If you want to assign some other sort of meaning that is separate from both significance and statistics, that’s fine, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Statistically, the only way for something to be meaningful is for it to be significant.

For astrology to be statistically significant and adequately predictive, we should be able to go back to your history of mars whatevers and find that there was a political/military/terrorist action very near the time of each one and we should find that all political/military/terrorist actions are accounted for on your list of mars whatevers.

I can stand here and call out ‘heads’ all day and I’ll be right about 50% of the time, but not if there’s no coin, or if the coin has two tails.

Astrology seems to require enough knowledge about current events or the life of the individual client (usually through cold reading) to ‘interpret’ the planets and project an outcome that a reasonably astute observer would come to the same conclusions that an astrologer would based on that knowledge.

Yes, there’s been a political shake-up this year. No, that’s not a big surprise if you look at last year and the years before. Yes, we’re likely to have a shake-up in 2012 because of people who believe astrologers who say it’s the end of the world. No, that’s not a bid surprise if you’ve been paying attention to box-office hits for the last decade.

On the issue of “meaningfulness” versus “significance,” a wide chasm exists.

The former is a term used in “logic,” which does have a role in statistical analysis: “Having a recognizable function in a logical language or other sign system.” (This is from my electronic version of the Oxford American Dictionary. I make it a point to have the best references at hand.) The latter term is a specific part of the lexicon of that branch of math we call “Statistics,” and the meaning is self-evident.

The two are not interchangeable. Your syntax in your statements where you use this word is faulty.

If you have information to the contrary, please show me, don’t tell me. Until then, you should probably avoid posting anything to avoid further self-inflicted humiliation.

Your Toronto Two-Step of a reply is, as usual, an adventure in the fog.

As for the perennial straw-man featuring gravity, Jupiter, babies and obstetricians, please cite the astrological claim that the gravity of planets determines the astrological effect.

I want a real citation of a real book, some text somewhere that makes this claim. Surely you know right where to go.

I will not partake in this thread any further until you do so. I have taken the time to reply to your comments with extensive specificity, paragraph by paragraph, as one would expect given the subject matter and attendant nebulous (pun intended) definitions being tossed about.

Let me say this ONE MORE TIME: I don’t care a bat’s bottom if your quazi-phantom-deterministic-number-puker exists or not, as it has nothing to do with astrology, human behavior, or anything else relevant to this discussion.

I’m not going to argue the merits of it, nor am I going to think about it for one more minute of my otherwise sublime life.

I have answered all of the questions put forth to the best of my ability, and I feel that I deserve more than your arrogant little lectures, replete with awful grammar and abtuse commentary.

I submit here that this discussion, up to this piont, is sufficient enough for, oh, let’s say 9 out of 10 adults with IQ’s over 100, to see that just about everything I have said has gone over your head somehow.

If you want to be assured that you, Jason the Canadian, have put a huge, fatal dent in the veracity of post-Renaissance Western Astrology with just your own powers of reasoning, then I congratulate you on doing what millions have done before. Woo hoo!

By definition, astrology predicts the past as well as the future, so we should be able to look to the past and see something.

Wow. Predicting the past sounds like such a cool, amazing thing to do! I bet it’s really, really hard, too. It’s simply staggering to imagine what it must be like to be able to see something in the past.

Ed: By definition, astrology predicts the past as well as the future, so we should be able to look to the past and see something.

Wow. Predicting the past sounds like such a cool, amazing thing to do! I bet it’s really, really hard, too. It’s simply staggering to imagine what it must be like to be able to see something in the past.

Yes, it’s quite the thrill for a client when I look back through the history of their life via astrology and pull out big events.

Or, did you think that I was born with every last person’s own personal history of their entire life, but I use the astrology just to fool ’em?

Nice try, but once again someone here is arguing from a point of ignorance, just like we would expect from a religious mindset.

Oh, please, Dan, pay attention … what astrology book, text, video, et al, claims that the gravitational strength of Jupiter causes the astrological effects of Jupiter? I know I’ve never seen it. Also, please explain how gravity is what holds a human being together, and why the doctor’s gravity doesn’t cause the newborn to stick to him.

Please go look up “straw man argument” in Wikipedia before you speak again and make a fool of yourself — again.

No email notifications? You must be having a communication problem. Too bad Mercury isn’t in retrograde or you’d be able to understand why it’s happening. Speaking of communication problems, picking on semantics isn’t your best choice in arguing against the validity of statistics. I don’t have my statistics textbook handy or I’d cite some passages for you, but if it makes you feel better, we can pretend that I was saying “statistically significant” the whole time.

In order for something predictive to be useful, it must be shown that it’s predictions are accurate in a statistically significant way. Therefore, if astrology is predictive, then it must 1. predict events significantly more accurately than guessing and 2. have significantly fewer false positives than guessing. So in your Mars example, there should be significantly more major conflicts when Mars goes retrograde, matching the scale of however you measure the retrograde-ness of Mars, and there should be significantly fewer major conflicts when Mars is not retrograde.

Conveniently, there are thousands of years of history that could be analyzed to determine if this is the case. But I’m not surprised that no-one has bothered.

Oh, please, Dan, pay attention … what astrology book, text, video, et al, claims that the gravitational strength of Jupiter causes the astrological effects of Jupiter? I know I’ve never seen it. Also, please explain how gravity is what holds a human being together, and why the doctor’s gravity doesn’t cause the newborn to stick to him.

Oh, please, Ed; pay attention. I asked for evidence of your precious astrological effect. I said nothing about gravity.

Want to play semantics? Check out the etymology of the word predict sometime. You know that pesky little pre at the beginning which signifies before instead of after the fact? Pre plus dict: to say before… to foretell. Put the parts together and you get the definition. Isn’t it cool how that works!?!?! Predicting the past… What a maroon!!

Come on, Crumpo; you can do better that that.

Oh, sorry. I guess you can’t do better than that. You’re nothing but a blowhard. You’re an Internet Tough Guy. There’s a reason why Damon and Terese and other astrologers won’t have anything to do with you: You’re a pompous ass, and you’re the only astrologer on the planet who actually knows what Gauquelin was talking about. How do we know? You tell everyone at the drop of a hat; that’s how!

Hanging around at 9/11 truther meetings in hopes of finding still more gullible marks? Or, have you talked yourself into believing it was an “inside job”? Barnum would be proud. You’ve found a long line of suckers, and bilk them for whatever the market will bear as you tell them what they want to hear.

One last parting shot: If your concept of gravity has anything at all to do with holding a human being together or wondering why people don’t stick to each other because of it, you’re in much worse mental shape than I thought.

Your subscription has been active since 9-13-2011. I have received every e-mail from every subscribed post (including this one) from FtB during this time frame. As Ben suggests, maybe your computer issues are your own, and a counterexample to the “Mercury in retrograde causing computer difficulties” trope (especially since it’s direct right now, and not even in a “shadow period” or whatever). Is your domain up for renewal? Is your hosting package up to date? Was your hosting provider having email issues? Are you classifying as spam anything that contains too much reality for your conspiracy and dogma addled brain to comprehend?

No email notifications? You must be having a communication problem. Too bad Mercury isn’t in retrograde or you’d be able to understand why it’s happening. Speaking of communication problems, picking on semantics isn’t your best choice in arguing against the validity of statistics. I don’t have my statistics textbook handy or I’d cite some passages for you, but if it makes you feel better, we can pretend that I was saying “statistically significant” the whole time.

Where did you get the idea I was “arguing against the validity of statistics”? I’m only saying that it is pointless to make up fake planetary positions with computer programs as a way to test astrological practices.

You can’t find a “statistics textbook” online? Try Google Books. I was able to find a bevy of sites that listed definitions.

In order for something predictive to be useful, it must be shown that it’s predictions are accurate in a statistically significant way.

How did you arrive at this bizarre conclusion? Were all predictions made before the advent of “statistics” not useful??

Therefore, if astrology is predictive, then it must 1. predict events significantly more accurately than guessing and 2. have significantly fewer false positives than guessing….

Your use of “false positives” here confounds me. How does one guess a “false positive”?? I do, though, agree that if astrology can’t do any better than your Aunt Martha from Kansas who’s never heard of a Lunar Node, then it’s quite useless.

So in your Mars example, there should be significantly more major conflicts when Mars goes retrograde, matching the scale of however you measure the retrograde-ness of Mars, and there should be significantly fewer major conflicts when Mars is not retrograde.

I said nothing of Mars going retrograde. My example was with standstills of Mars at high values of declination and the concurrent Sun/Mars cycle of 79 years. Perhaps y’all should bone up on your astronomical terminology if you’re going to talk astronomy.

Conveniently, there are thousands of years of history that could be analyzed to determine if this is the case. But I’m not surprised that no-one has bothered.

Still, for one to bother, one would need to jettison the prejudices about astrology and let the findings of the study do the talking. That’s how real scientists go about their work — by putting their own biases aside as best they can.

That goes for astrologers too, as many of them are all to eager to embrace much of it without any critical thinking. The worst enemy of astrology in our day are amateur astrologers.

A video is available called “Quantum Astrology” by Mark Levine that discusses the Saturn/Pluto cycle and historical developments in depth. It’s a great vid insofar as it is made for a wide audience and non-astrologers as well as astrologers.

Where did you get the idea I was “arguing against the validity of statistics”?

Pretty much every one of your posts is either ignoring the importance of statistical analysis or saying it doesn’t apply to astrology.

How did you arrive at this bizarre conclusion? Were all predictions made before the advent of “statistics” not useful??

Once again, you pick on semantics, not content. Any prediction that does not rise up to the challenge of statistical analysis is indeed not useful. I can stand in the woods and yell ‘wolf!’ a hundred times and if no wolf comes, that prediction is not useful, nor is it statistically significant (except as proof that I cannot predict the arrival of wolves). Speaking of which:

How does one guess a “false positive”??

You really need to read some of those statistics textbooks you found on Google books. From the coin flip example, if we are counting the number of times that you flip heads, then every time I call heads and you flip tails is a false positive. My guess was wrong. In this case, a false positive would be a prediction of whatever Mars is supposed to predict when it does whatever it does that you use to predict things that turns out to not happen.

Well, I’M BOTHERING

No, you’re not. You’re cherry-picking matches from history. Just because I called heads half the times the coin fell on heads doesn’t mean I’m able to predict coin flips. If you can actually show a significant uptick in whatever you say Mars predicts when Mars does whatever you say Mars does when it predicts something, then you have shown Mars to actually predict things. Until then, I will remain unconvinced.

Wow, Ed. So now you’ve told us that nothing discernibly (aka “statistically” or “measurably”) different (aka “significant” or “meaningful”) happens because the planets are in or near one spot or another and that there’s nothing about those planets that would cause anything special to happen at any distance from those planets. Huh.

Ed doesn’t want to respond to the direct refutation of his claims in the new post, and given the lower audience on this one, is more interested in sticking his douchebaggery to someplace where he incorrectly thinks he’s winning. So I’m closing this comment thread and moving his last comment there.

Sorry Ben, I know you were still in the midst of an argument on the relevance of statistical significance (and the interchangeability of the word “meaningful” with “significant”). And Stephanie, that comment is priceless, and deserves to be moved to the new one too. This dog’s gotta be brought to curb.

Undeniably believe that which you said. Your favorite justification seemed to be on the internet the easiest thing to be aware of. I say to you, I definitely get annoyed although people consider worries that they plainly donβ€™t know about. You managed to hit the nail upon the top and also defined out the whole thing without having side effect , men and women can take a signal. Will likely be back to get a lot more. Thanks